


Elegy

by Bananas45



Category: B: The Beginning (Anime)
Genre: Choking, Dubious Consent, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mind Games, Not Happy, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 17:27:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bananas45/pseuds/Bananas45
Summary: His past still makes him feel sick, his life before police work feels sickeningly nostalgic yet distant. He’s suddenly aware those memories are his only reminder of Erika now. It’s so startling. He covers his mouth unsure whether it’s to stop his sobs or hold of his nausea. His shoulders shake harder than he thought possible and his whole body feels cold. If he’d only been there, more involved with her life, they’d drifted in the last couple of years, all three of them-“It’s your fault she’s dead”





	Elegy

**Author's Note:**

> This brewed in my mind for ages and ages but I sort of refused to write it but I am weak and it was annoying me to hell so I did.   
> It's soo angsty and i apologise for that.

“I’m so sorry, Keith”   
Gilbert’s voice is surprisingly wrecked sounding given how utterly, pathetically sanitary the whole funeral was. Given how utterly, pathetically sanitary Gilbert’s sympathy is.  
Keith is standing, staring at crumbling faux marble, ignoring the staff members at the other side of the bar who are chatting about the most mundane of things, oblivious to the numbing pain around them or maybe because of it when the voice shatters the glass of his contemplative grief.  
A laugh, forced and croaked, crawls out his throat and his hand quivers on the coffee cup.   
“What for?” He barely recognises his own voice, though he’s barely had to speak, nothing except soft thank yous in response to commiseration.   
The eulogy was delivered by her closest school friend, a man Keith had barely spoken two words too, who told the same stories but told them wrong, told them with a tone Keith maybe never would have. It’s all perspective in the end though isn’t it. There are whispers, he thinks, around him, on how absent he’d been throughout this whole process.   
Gilbert’s jaw works, processing the right thing to say but clearly not finding it, not that things have ever needed to be spoken between them. By their own self imposed rules of absolute friendship, Gilbert shouldn’t need to say a thing. Yet here he is, blue eyes smoldering and eyelids flickering like this is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.   
“Everything” He tries, a weak laugh falling out his lips like a bunch of fucking flowers.   
“Did you kill her?” Keith mutters and Gilbert’s face steels, as though he’s disappointed, eyes closing.  
“No-”   
“Then why are you sorry” Keith says, softer now, fighting Gilbert is the last thing he’s up for. In Fact he wouldn’t mind just burying his head in the man's shoulder, drag in a half sob and clutch at his shirt, breath how he’s lost everything, let just how overwhelming this whole thing is wash over them, lose themselves in the heat of it all -   
Ah but that’s fantasy, that’s as fantastical as thinking a funeral for a woman - barely a woman, almost a girl - who’s been violently, viscerally murdered could be anything other than just awkward. Painfully awkward. Keith wants to laugh at just how unemotional he feels, wants to ask Gilbert if the emotion on his perfect fucking face is fake. Like back in school when they’d be told off for skipping class and Gilbert would look so genuinely remorseful.   
“Give me a break Keith” Gilbert smiles but this time it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re not-”   
“What?” Keith turns on him and their eyes meet, clouded with intrigue and misplaced desire like the do whenever they catch a glance of each other. ,  
It’s fucked.   
They’re fucked.   
“Finish that sentence, Gilbert”   
Gilbert’s nostrils flare just a little. As though he’s some proud stallion unable to just ride of into the sunset without kicking something in the head first.   
“I’m your friend, Keith and I was her friend”   
“And you were always such a good friend” Keith hisses. It’s unusually, he’s not usually the confrontational one, but he’s understandably not in the mood. Gilbert is still, somehow, managing to make him feel guilty about it.   
Gilbert’s jaw clenches.   
“What’s that meant to mean?” He tilts his head, smile still in place even if there is something shattering behind it - or is that just his own reflection in those ice blue eyes. He’s that one kid who stands on the lake in winter even though everyone warned him the ice wouldn’t take his weight. Gilbert’s cracking.  
“You know exactly what it means” Keith laughs and it’s there, the energy between them that sparks a fire into the absolute dullness of the world they both now inhabit. Well, we’ve only got each other now, Gilbert. Are you happy-  
“I, um”   
The voice, new and clean cut like the linen on the coffee table, with it’s dry and pitiful sandwiches, splits the tension between them. It’s Eric, off course it is, Eric who was actually there for him when Erkia died, who didn’t drop of the face of the earth or act like somehow they were more affected or suddenly become distant-   
“I have to go, Keith” The touch on his arm, strong and stable, should be nice but Keith can only nod, can only avert his eyes from the intensity of Eric’s, the raw and unfiltered concern he sees there.  
Then it hits him full force, as Eric disappears into the sea of people too awkward to approach Keith. The only reason he dropped of the face of the earth, the only reason they’re suddenly distant is because of Eric. He likes when pieces of puzzle slip together that easily because the bigger picture is infuriating only evasive currently.   
Gilbert is livid at the fact they sat together. Eric and Keith, with the harsh back of police procedure the only thing to keep Keith upright. The only thing that’s stopping him from falling apart; the firm arm of the law on his elbow.   
“How long are you going to do this?” Gilbert asks softly and there is a lot behind it. Too much for Keith to catch and that fucking pisses him off too because Gilbert is layers deep in deception and catching it all can- no, is impossible. Even still, he feels like he’s failing.   
“Be friends with Eric?” Keith asks and it’s lottery gold. Gilbert almost cracks, just almost, his lips quirk downwards and his gaze hardens just a little bit more.   
“Yeah” He laughs softly, looking down. “I thought- Yeah, fuck what I thought” He sighs and swallows like he’s trying not to cry.   
Oh It’s so pitiful. If he thinks guilting Keith will work he’s wrong. Keith/ feels guilt enough plenty for the death of his sister-   
His heart constricts in that awful, mundane, terrible way when grief catches you completely off guard.   
He swallows against the horror that’s welling inside his chest.   
“Oh fuck you, Gilbert” He laughs, crosses his arms across his suit and keeps his eyes down. He never could make eye contact when he was being actually abrasive.   
“Fuck me?” Gilbert chuckles. “Yes Keith, Lash out, you’re oh so good at that. When I’m trying to help-”   
“Don’t!” Keith shouts it, full and harsh because never once, never once over the years has Gilbert helped him, never has he even tried and to imply with that tone that Keith is somehow ungrateful? To insinuate with such genuine honesty in his voice that he is the wounded party, the faithful friend, tossed to the wind. How dare he make this, this of all moments, about him?   
Because it’s always my fault, it’s somehow always my fault isn’t, Gilbert? You push and you push till I’m half fucking mad but you never follow through. Why on earth would I think you’d have the decency to hold your fucking fire at my sisters fucking funeral. Because you’re a fucking cheat and a leach and My god, The idea that maybe this affects me more than you, that kills you doesn’t it? Half the time I think I fucking hate you-  
“Keith!” Gilbert barks, eyes wide, wide with unhidden, unbridled glee for just a moment before it clouds into unquestioning loyalty and childlike trust his hand on Keith’s arm, betrayal and hurt hidden in his eyes but it’s all so fake-   
Keith blinks and shakes the touch off.   
People are staring, staring and then some but there is an odd and palpable relief, carnivorous in nature. ‘He feels’ seems to be the sentiment, mixed glee and horror, morbid and human.  
“Come on, Keith” Gilbert takes his arm again. “I know you didn’t mean it”   
He feels like you do when your halfway asleep, unsure what is reality and what isn’t. It’s the first time in his life he’s never felt the clarity of his own thoughts and it’s terrifying - Had he said that out loud?  
“Keith” Gilbert glances around them before taking Keith’s arm, pulling and moving the hand to his back as he leads him towards the toilets. “I’m sorry” he says, just into Keith’s ear. “You’re right, that was unfair of me. I-I’m sorry, just, come on”   
Ah, but you still said it, you still made the impact and you still finally got your reaction- Stop.   
Keith doesn’t trust his own thoughts anymore.   
Maybe he should throw in the towel. This is clearly breaking him.   
No, that’s what Gilbert wants-   
Why would what Gilbert wants matter so much though-   
“Keith?” Gilbert says again. “You’re worrying me”   
He braces against the pink dyed granite of the sink and bites his lip, shaking his head as if to shake Gilbert off. He’s like some awful disarming, siren.   
“I’m fine”   
“No you’re not-”   
“I was fine till someone-”   
“You’re shutting everyone out-”   
They talk directly over each other like they use to when they were boys, when they’d explain things to teachers, or other friends and not want to let the other get a word in.   
“I’m shutting you out, there is a difference-”  
“It’s not like I actually spoke to your family, Keith, it’s not like I made half a fucking effort-”   
“I haven’t shut Eric out, if that’s where this is going”   
Gilbert’s jaw snaps shut, everything comes back to jealousy with Gilbert but innocent until proven guilty and Gilbert hides it all so well. Keith is no position- not after the stunt he just pulled- to question Gilbert’s integrity now of all times. But he can’t help but know, in his heart, that was Gilbert’s plan all along.  
“I’m getting you some water. Then you’re going to talk to some guests”   
It’s a command, like whenever they were at school dances, school events, school anything and Gilbert would hold Keith’s wrist in a vice grip and tell him who to talk to, who to dance with like he was embarrassed of him and then instantly blame him for being distant the second he chatted to anyone. Erika never minded much how weirdly obsessive Gilbert could get over the two of them.   
‘It’s cute. He’s protective’ She said after he had joined the tennis club age eleven and Gilbert had looked horrified.   
‘He was the one who told me to do some sport’ Keith pulled a few blades of grass out the ground beside him.   
‘I think he meant with him...’ Erika had said with a knowing smile.   
His past still makes him feel sick, his life before police work feels sickeningly nostalgic yet distant. He’s suddenly aware those memories are his only reminder of Erika now. It’s so startling. He covers his mouth unsure whether it’s to stop his sobs or hold of his nausea. His shoulders shake harder than he thought possible and his whole body feels cold. If he’d only been there, more involved with her life, they’d drifted in the last couple of years, all three of them-  
“It’s your fault she’s dead”   
He glances up from where he’d been studying the sink plug and sees Gilbert in the mirror, eyes full of a blood lust that’s partially sated, like a lion after it’s kill, mouth drawn into a lazy smirk.   
“It’s your fault”   
He spins, knocking the glass straight out of Gilbert’s hand as he straightened himself out.   
“What?” His own voice is uncharacteristically breathless and broken. He hates it.   
“I said It’s not your fault she’s dead.” Gilbert says slowly and puts his hand on Keith’s shoulder. “Are you sure you are okay?”   
The glass is shattered and there are shards all across the patterned floor.   
Keith bends to pick it up.   
“What do you want, Gilbert?” He sighs and the hysteria that he’d felt, that curled around him, around both of them, eases and leaves in its wake a bone deep exhaustion. Keith’s places the shards in his open palm.   
“Nothing, Keith”   
“Nothing” He snorts and shakes his head, pushes his glasses up his nose. “Nothing or everything, Gilbert? It’s, uh, like that snake that eats its own tail-” he snaps his fingers.  
“It doesn’t eat it’s own tail” Gilbert says. “He grasps it and when he lets go-”   
“The world will end” Keith finishes. “Yeah, I remember. Though your knowledge of myths is better than mine”   
Gilbert’s left foot shifts a tiny inch and Keith’s attention is drawn to it.   
“Yes” he says softly.   
Keith stands and drops the shards into the bin. “You’ve” He clears his throat, eyes unable to meet Gilbert’s as he shoves his hands in his pockets “Won this game”   
“Game?” Gilbert shakes his head, blinking. “Keith what’re you-”   
“Just take it, Gilbert” Keith breathes, head knocking back against the wall. He’s so tired and Gilbert has worn him down to exactly where he wants him, as he usually does. No matter how hard Keith fights, no matter how easy that puzzle is, Keith will never win until Gilbert allows it. Keith wonders how many times he’ll have to throw the game.   
Gilbert closes the gap between them, hand sliding in along Keith’s jaw and into his hair as he tilts his head to meet Keith’s lips. Keith shrinks back a little, shoulders bunching and hands not leaving his pockets as he squeezes his eyes shut in defeat. That’s all this is, defeat. Though there is something addictive about it, Keith realises painfully. Especially when it comes to Gilbert.   
He is loathed to think of the day he wins the game. It terrifies him a little.   
He feels alive at least as Gilbert slides his left hand along Keith’s side and round his back as he bites down on Keith’s lip.   
“Keith” Gilbert whispers. “Are you sure? You’re not in a good place” it’s mocking in tone, even if to anyone else it would sound caring.   
“I’m really not in the fucking mood, Gilbert” He lurches forward, capturing Gilbert’s cheeks between his fingers, the tips brushing the white strands as he forces Gilbert’s mouth over his harder. They stumble back a little with the force until Gilbert shoves Keith into a cubicle with a harsh push.   
Their lips meet again, harder and harder until one of them is bleeding. Keith can’t tell who.  
Gilbert’s fingers go to rip his shirt and Keith only just catches them before he manages it.   
“No” Keith manages, panting.   
“You’re tearing up” Gilbert sounds intrigued, pushing forward again to press their foreheads together as Keith is crowded against the wall. The whole cubicle shakes. There breath mingles as Keith tries to tilt his head back, worrying his lip as he closes his eyes, letting Gilbert nuzzle at his cheek.   
Gilbert pushes his palm against his crotch.   
“Will you sob, Keith?” Gilbert snarls, thumb dragging along the sharp line of Keith’s jaw.   
The muddy green of Keith’s eyes is beginning to shimmer.   
“Fuck” He gasps.   
“Let go” Gilbert snarls and his teeth bite against the pulse on Keith’s throat, hard enough to hurt but not to leave a mark. “Please, Keith. Come on. Or are you too proud?”   
He’s a mess and the shame and arousal, the pain in his gut, isn’t shifting or easing, just bubbling up his throat like some horrible creature. He thinks maybe this is the first time in his life he’s let someone see him like this- and it had to be fucking Gilbert didn’t it- so open and vulnerable but then again, this is the first time he’s actually felt this way. Somewhere, in the back of his head, considering the variables of how this day could go, he knew this would happen. He knew exactly how hard Gilbert would push.   
A hand undoes his trousers in between the bruising, burning kisses. His legs skid for purchase on the slick bathroom floor as Gilbert pushes at him harder, grinding up against him as he takes a breath from Keith’s mouth, leaving Keith to throw his head back to inhale something stuttering close to what a normality would call breathing.   
He can feel the tears trailing down his cheeks, can feel the hammer of his own heart matched with the pulse of his arousal. It’s overwhelmingly foreign. To feel this much; emotion and contact in such a maelstrom too.   
Their breath is the loudest thing in the echoey bathroom. Above that is the drum of chatter from the other room. Will people wonder where they’ve gone?   
Gilbert’s gone. That much is clear and Keith feels in the state he’s in, he’s in no position to fight the man.  
“Gilbert-” He tries anyway and his voice is painfully loud. He winces as he stares at the look on Gilbert’s face. The strand of hair so carefully pulled back frame his face as he stares with eyes that look like they’ve never shed tears, as Keith sniffs and sniffs again and still can’t control his own. Hadn’t he been crying during the service? He’d seen the tear tracks on Gilbert’s face. How can he look so disillusioned now. With terrifying intimacy and care, with intrigue and a tilt of his head, Gilbert leans forward and licks away the drops from his cheek. Keith’s chest rattles with caged sobs - screams, maybe - and he can’t help but push Gilbert off a little.   
It was the wrong move - and on any other day, in any other state of mind, Keith would know that - and Gilbert snarls as he shoves a hand into Keith’s boxers with a punishing grip.   
His cry is only masked by the sound of the door swinging open.   
Gilbert throws his other hand over Keith’s mouth, thumb bracketing his nose as his palm splays over his open mouth, in a perfect air tight seal that stops Keith biting down.   
“It’s so sad”   
Gilbert presses harder, until Keith’s stomach has to tense.   
“Yes, really sad”   
A tap runs.   
“She was a beautiful girl”   
The hand in his boxers moves slowly, almost teasingly up and down and Keith’s foot skids, sending them both an inch down the wall they’re pushed against. Gilbert doesn’t relent, even as the tears begin to trail, soak between his fingers. Keith can taste the salt.   
“So much potential too and how did she die? Was it really murder?”   
Keith’s eyes begin to unfocus, little black dots rimmed with colour pop behind his eyes as the stall shimmers in and out of clarity.   
“Yes, apparently. Her poor brother was a cop, too. He’s on the case, I heard”   
Gilbert’s hand pulls harder, would usually drag a response from Keith but his whole body is taunt, unable to make a noise in order to preserve air. He blinks down to look at Gilbert but his head is tilted away. Keith’s tongue pushes against the palm and gets a hard pinch over his nose in response. He’s shaking hard now, violently hard, as his body tries to expel the caught air. The hand on his cock - fuck, he tries not to even consider that - speeds up.   
“That feels a bit much for the poor kid”   
The air is forced out his body into Gilbert’s palm and the pain returns tenfold. His ribs ache and his mind blanks, as if everything is grinding to some vicious hault. He gets a grip on GIlbert’s arm finally, digging in hard enough to draw blood even through the shirt as his legs tremble.   
Gilbert barely seems fazed.   
“Yes, though I think he asked”   
It’s in this strange place between conscious and unconscious that his hips seem to move against Gilbert’s other hand and that gets his attention. GIlbert’s eyes flash up to Keith’s with a grin on them that is so clearly predatory.  
Keith can barely see it though, as his body fights and gives in simultaneously, in a swirl of sensation Keith can’t even begin to categorize. He’s trying to work it through in his head but it’s like reading with the lights out, as everything grinds to a flashing, terrifying but oh so pleasurable hault. Weightless and heavy as he fights not to fall unconscious. A buzz fills his head that against the judders of his deprived body feel nice. He chases it until his eyes, still open, can only see black against the push.   
There is a rush of euphoria and then-   
Gilbert pulls his hand away, dripping with saliva and looks over Keith. He hears the door swing shut over the buzz in his ears.   
“Woah” He laughs. “You’re a mess”   
Keith coughs hard, dragging in a rush of air that makes his legs gives out, his back sliding down to the ground as he holds his mouth and tries to regulate his breath.   
“What the fuck-” his voice is wrecked, barely a scratch of a voice. “Was- that?”   
“Huh” Gilbert hums to himself. “You seemed to enjoy it. I just didn’t want those two old men hearing. For your reputation. Imagine, fucking your sisters best friend in a bathroom cubicle at her funeral” Gilbert chuckles and the whole sentence, so utterly deadpan, is one of the reasons he probably fell in love with Gilbert.   
Keith glares at him from the floor as the numb revulsion begins to spread back through him. Gilbert’s hands, both, are soaking. Oh fuck, he hates himself.   
“Hey” Gilbert crouches over him. “Don’t look like that...sorry” He sighs and blinks. “I was just trying to help and I thought that you-” Gilbert blinks “You seemed to want this. Maybe I took advantage” He sounds guilty.   
Keith just drags in breath.   
“I’m sorry” Gilbert says again. “I’m really sorry”   
And although Keith doesn’t believe him, not really, he’s so fucking tired now that accepting it seems easier.   
“Really I had no idea how hard I was pushing” Gilbert says.   
Gilbert pulls him upright and pushes his glasses up his nose with a gentle hand and even now, when he should be angry, he can’t help but murmur;  
“You caught me on a breath out. I was just surprised” He blinks tears out his eyes. “It’s the first time I’ve cried, though”   
it’s strange that even now, grown up and fully formed, Keith still makes excuses for Gilbert’s behaviour, even though he doesn’t understand it. He use to defend Gilbert when they were boys. Like when he broke Keith’s collar, or winded him play fighting. It was always just a misunderstanding when it came to Gilbert and emotion seemed to roll like some vicious undercurrent through Gilbert unlike anything Keith had ever seen. He’d become desensitised to the strangeness of it through their codependency. He was aware, logically, of that. Though recognising a problem doesn’t mean you can solve it.   
“Ever?” Gilbert teases, straightening out the lines of Keith’s suit for him.   
“Not quite” Keith murmurs.   
Quiet falls over them and Keith begins to feel like himself again, if not a little more broken, a little more emotional If not a little more intrigued by this out of control side of himself Gilbert forced out in the most unlikely, yet obvious, place. Shame is curling around him as he thinks of what people would think but it’s fleeting as he focuses on Gilbert’s eyes and, almost entranced, can’t help but say;  
“I’m sorry for earlier”   
Gilbert smiles gently but it’s the smile of a winner, someone who’s been starved for a victory for years and finally found it.   
And Keith knows how dangerous this is, knows exactly what type of rabbit hole he’s been digging himself ever since he was a boy. He just never thought that while he dug down, someone was filling in the hole above him. And maybe Gilbert has him exactly where he wants him, or maybe he has Gilbert but he knows rationally how wrong this is.   
The worst part is nothing feels like this - Not Eric’s kind, stumbling honesty and good intention, not work’s constant thrum and energy, not even Erika’s love felt anything close to whatever Gilbert brings out in him.   
And it’s selfish desire, more than anything else, that keeps him from exploring what this means, what Gilbert could really be.   
But worse, he knows, in his heart, the day he finds a puzzle more exciting than Gilbert Ross, will be the day the truth he already knows, somewhere under the desire, will become painfully apparent.   
Right now he lets the anger wash over him, the need for comfort, that for a moment had been so overwhelming he’d let Gilbert- he stops, head shaking a little as he redoes his tie- has gone and all that’s left is the sickening rage he’d felt before, the numb hatred for everything that led him to this point.  
He unlocks the door with an apathetic huff.   
“I’ll see you on Monday, Gilbert”   
He misses the pure, unbridled rage in Gilbert’s eyes.


End file.
